Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Mini Paper 2

A lot of the time I'd get that feeling like I was in the middle of a huge black ocean, or in deep space, but not in the fascinating way. (3.2)

“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” focuses on a lot of different themes, however one of the most prominent deals with fear brought on by grief and how to overcome or move past your fear, often with the help from people who care about you. Both Oskar, Grandma, Grandpa, and Mom experience fear, especially after and during the tragedy of 9/11. It was a common experience faced by many of the people, especially those who lived in New York City, after facing this act of terrorism.  There is an immense feeling of anxiety throughout the novel which is eventually overcome, for Oskar at least, with the help of his loved ones surrounding him.

This is a prime example of how Oskar has a large problem with anxious behavior and thoughts, which appear more strongly after the passing of his father. The way he thinks and goes about understanding the world is different than most nine year old children do and he connected to his father because of this. So, after the death of his father, he has nobody to connect with and this causes his thoughts to become overwhelming. This leads him to stop communicating and shut himself out from the world, for example making excuses to not go to school anymore. These are signs of someone who is dealing with intense anxiety. Oskar expresses the feelings he gets by using metaphors and similes. His lack of understanding about concepts in the world, like mortality and death for example, are partly due to his age and partly because of how he thinks.  Some of his fears include enclosed spaces, the staten island ferry, and fireworks, etc. While he does not have a precise phobia and appears to be very curious about how the world works, he does constantly feel disconnected and lost from not only his family but the world as a whole.

Despite this anxiety he has faced after losing his father and trying to grieve, upon finding the letter with the key and the last name “Black” on it, left by his dad, he still decides to figure out who this person is as well as what this key unlocks. This requires Oskar to go around the city, which with all of his fears and the constant movement is anxiety inducing on its own, as well as talking to multiple strangers. Oskar struggles to continue the journey but in a way feels that solving this mystery will make him feel closer to his dad again, something to fill this feeling of disconnect. This allows him to face many of his fears. His mother knows what Oskar is planning and how he is going through the list of names of people in the city who have the last name Black and possibly has all of them start helping Oskar overcome his fears, especially Abe Black, who gets him to ride a rollercoaster. In Chapter Seven on page forty five Oskar admits he isn’t a fan of these amusement park rides and even states “Obviously I'm incredibly panicky about roller coasters, but Abe convinced me to ride one with him”. This proves that the way for anyone to overcome situations that frighten people is for them to be accompanied by others who are supportive of them. Once Abe is officially done helping him and he is on his own again, his anxious thoughts come back, stronger than ever. He expresses this by saying “my boots were the heaviest they’d ever been” (Safron Foer, 234). This is an exaggeration because his boots are in fact exactly the same, however when Oskar is on his own, every fear he has comes back to the surface, but he begins to learn how to cope with these things on his own, with the help of his family, especially his mother who he originally shut out.

Oskar is not the only one in the book who deals with fear and how to cope with it, his grandmother also faces times of anxiety which is seen in her letters placed throughout the book. One of her biggest fears is the fear of being left alone, "I don't know if I ever loved your grandfather, but I've loved not being alone" (Safran Foer, 93). Grandma struggles to come to terms with the fact that her husband is in love with her sister and not at all interested in her, he just settled to marry her since there wasn't another choice. While she is aware of this, she finds comfort in the idea of being in the company of another living being, despite the lack of real romantic connection. She is not in this relationship for love, she is in it out of fear. This is something that happens a lot of the time in our society, people are so afraid to die alone or to be alone that they settle, even if it causes them more anxiety than being alone does. This is not her only fear though, as the bombing in Dresden also occurs, which she mentions in her letters. She shows concern that seems really unimportant, but she worries still that the papers she had kept in her home helped the fire start that burnt down her house. Ultimately it would have been destroyed from the bombing with or without those papers, but it shows how the tiniest things that seem really unimportant can cross someone’s mind who has issues with anxious thoughts and behaviors. Her comments about this helping the fire engulf her home in Dresden, creates anxiety within Oskar who debates getting rid of some papers in case of a fire, hoping that perhaps it would help make it less damaging. Grandpa also writes about the terror he feels after the bombing in Dresden.

It proves that in times of pure chaos, our true anxieties come to the surface and often do not go back into hiding. Most of these anxieties are caused by loss, for instance the bombing as well as the destruction of the twin towers. This is one of the reasons that after losing his dad, whom he connected with the most, he felt disconnected. However, Oskar and Grandma remain connected and are there for each other because they are both extremely fearful of the world, for similar reasons. Oskar realizes at the end of the novel you cannot go through life keeping all of your anxieties to yourself and facing your problems completely alone, this is when he lets his mother back into his life.